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Carlos Castaneda - "My effort to make sense of don Juan's world is my own way of paying back to him for this grand opportunity. if I don't make the effort to render his world as a coherent phenomenon it'll go by the way it has for hundreds of years, as a nonsensical activity when it is not nonsensical; it's not fraudulent -- it's a very serious endeavor."

History of this Carlos Castaneda compilation and my thoughts on Carlos Castaneda's work

I was first introduced to Carlos Castaneda when there was just one Carlos Castaneda book: The Teachings of Don Juan. It was the fall of 1968. That Carlos Castaneda book was assigned reading for an English class I was taking.

Fortunately for me I was interested in Carlos Castaneda books for what I considered their good advice and the glimpse they gave into human possibility with no judgement on my part regarding their truthfulness.

In the fourth book, Tales of Power, Carlos Castaneda reported don Juan as saying that a man of knowledge did NOT believe but rather had to believe and that that meant believing according to one's innermost predilection. That was to say, knowing full well that what one had chosen to believe might well NOT be true but that one chose to believe (had to believe) as that choice matched their spirit (my phrasing).

The skeptics soon came along with one of them becoming quite well known for his book purportedly exposing Carlos Castaneda as a fraud (I don't think the author quite put it so bluntly but he might as well have if he actually didn't). I find it unfortunate, not for myself or for others but for that author, that he could not see the forest for the trees.

To those who know little of Carlos Castaneda books but have found this site, please know that there is NOTHING to believe with Carlos Castaneda. ALL of it is for you to verify through your own experience and you CAN verify it. Read what the skeptics say if you wish but don't be stopped by them. That would be a mistake.

If you are new to Carlos Castaneda and this compilation trust me when I tell you that you've stumbled upon the key to your human potential! Of course it is entirely up to each of us to utilize it.

I like what Yoda said in The Empire Strikes Back, "Do. Or do not. There is no try."

After reading the third book by Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan, I began setting myself the task each night of looking for my hands in my dreams. It was three years later that I had my first volitional dream, or, as most would call it, lucid dream. I thought that if that part of the Carlos Castaneda books was true as my own experience then knew it to be, that perhaps more if not all of the possibilities Carlos Castaneda explained were also a part of human potential.

Back to the skeptics: I say that it is unfortunate for them that they have chosen to not take what Carlos Castaneda has reported as true or possible because by taking that point of view they have no impetus for even trying to follow don Juan's teachings. And to add to that point: There is nothing to do per se that is offensive in following the teachings, but rather ALL to be gained.

But back to my compiling the Carlos Castaneda books into what became this website: I decided to record his books so that I could listen to them while at work. I actually read all of then onto cassette tapes but soon grew tired of listening to the story part in each one so began the task of marking in pencil the parts that I wanted to hear. Given the nature of the text, however, I found that I had to rewrite many parts to make it flow. As an example, this passage from Tales of Power where Carlos had told don Juan of his having taken his cats to be put to sleep and of how one of them, Max, had apparently sensed that all was not well and jumped out of the car and ran away when he had the chance. Following this passage in blue is my compiled version in purple.

"What I've been trying to tell you is that as a warrior you cannot just believe this and let it go at that. With Max, having to believe means that you accept the fact that his escape might have been a useless outburst. He might have jumped into the sewer and died instantly. He might have drowned or starved to death, or he might have been eaten by rats. A warrior considers all those possibilities and then chooses to believe in accordance with his innermost predilection.
"As a warrior you have to believe that Max made it, that he not only escaped but that he sustained his power. You have to believe it. Let's say that without that belief you have nothing."
The distinction became very clear. I thought I really had chosen to believe that Max had survived, knowing that he was handicapped by a lifetime of soft and pampered living.
"Believing is a cinch," don Juan went on. "Having to believe is something else. In this case, for instance, power gave you a splendid lesson, but you chose to use only part of it. If you have to believe, however, you must use all the event."
"I see what you mean," I said.
My mind was in a state of clarity and I thought I was grasping his concepts with no effort at all.
"I'm afraid you still don't understand," he said, almost whispering.
He stared at me. I held his look for a moment.
"What about the other cat?" he asked.
"Uh? The other cat?" I repeated involuntarily.
I had forgotten about it. My symbol had rotated around Max. The other cat was of no consequence to me.
"But he is!" don Juan exclaimed when I voiced my thoughts. ''Having to believe means that you have to also account for the other cat. The one that went playfully licking the hands that were carrying him to his doom. That was the cat that went to his death trustingly, filled with his cat's judgments.
"You think you're like Max, therefore you have forgotten about the other cat. You don't even know his name. Having to believe means that you must consider everything, and before deciding that you are like Max you must consider that you may be like the other cat; instead of running for your life and taking your chances, you may be going to your doom happily, filled with your judgments."

And my compiling of that passage, which, reading the original again now after over 20 years, I see that I didn't really capture the whole power of the original passage -- a good reason for you to read the actual books and not just this compilation. In my defense, however, I will tell you that this is one of only about three places where I sort of gave my own interpretation. The vast majority is very very accurately compiled to match the teachings presented in the books:

Having to believe means that you accept the facts of
something, consider all possibilities and possible outcomes, and then
choose to believe in accordance with your innermost predilection.
Believing is a cinch. Having to believe is something
else. If you have to believe, you must use all of an
event, account for all possibilities, and consider everything. Before
deciding that you believe one way you must consider that it may well
be another way.

After a few years I'd marked the books as I wanted and then typed it onto my computer. That was around 1992. I then printed and proofread it about, literally, 18 times to get it right. Then I read it onto 45 minute cassette tapes (thus the length of the audio parts here).

So that's the basic history of how this came to be and I trust that you will find it of value.

As Carlos Castaneda has said, how far each of us goes on the path of knowledge is up to us and our level of impeccability. I encourage you to find and listen to Carlos Castaneda's interview with Theodor Roszak in 1969 where he explains in his own words his motive for writing about his experiences, which, again, I personally, have to believe are true.

Carlos Castaneda is quoted as having said, "I don't promise anything. I am not a guru. Freedom is an individual choice, and each one of us must assume the responsibility of fighting for it."

May this compilation of Carlos Castaneda's books support you in that fight.

Listen to this compilation of Carlos Castaneda's don Juan's Teachings on sixteen, 45 minute MP3s.You will also find one of them beginning the section that one covers.

...this is not a work of fiction. What I am describing is alien to
us; therefore, it seems unreal.
CARLOS CASTANEDA
(From The Eagle's Gift; prologue)

Nothing in the world is a gift. Whatever there is to learn has to be
learned the hard way.
Turn my concepts into a viable way of life by a process of
repetition. Everything new in our lives, such as the sorcerers'
concepts I am teaching you, must be repeated to us to the point of
exhaustion before we open ourselves to it.
DON JUAN

Introduction

(This introduction was taken from Castaneda's introduction to
Journey To Ixtlan, and, as I explain in the foreword , done in the style I've used
throughout this compilation: put into the form of being as though it
were delivered from don Juan to each of us.)

The basic premise of sorcery for a sorcerer is that the world of
everyday life is not real, or out there, as we believe it is. For a
sorcerer, reality, or the world we all know, is only a
description.
For the sake of validating this premise I will concentrate the best
of my efforts into leading you into a genuine conviction that what
you hold in mind as the world at hand is merely a description of the
world; a description that has been pounded into you from the moment
you were born.
Everyone who comes into contact with a child is a teacher who
incessantly describes the world to him, until the moment when the
child is capable of perceiving the world as it is described. We have
no memory of that portentous moment, simply because none of us could
possibly have had any point of reference to compare it to anything
else. From that moment on, however, the child is a
member. He knows the description of the world; and his
membership becomes full-fledged, perhaps, when he is
capable of making all the proper perceptual interpretations which, by
conforming to that description, validate it.
The reality of our day-to-day life, then, consists of an endless flow
of perceptual interpretations which we, the individuals who share a
specific membership, have learned to make in common.
The idea that the perceptual interpretations that make up the world
have a flow is congruous with the fact that they run uninterruptedly
and are rarely, if ever, open to question. In fact the reality of the
world we know is so taken for granted that the basic premise of
sorcery, that our reality is merely one of many descriptions, can
hardly be taken as a serious proposition.

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Fortunately for you, I'm not concerned at all with whether or not you
can take my proposition seriously, and thus I will proceed to
elucidate my points, in spite of your opposition, your disbelief, and
your inability to understand what I am saying. Thus, as a teacher of
sorcery, my endeavor is to describe the world to you. Your difficulty
in grasping my concepts and methods will stem from the fact that the
units of my description are alien and incompatible with those of your
own.
I am teaching you how to see as opposed to merely
looking, and stopping the world is the
first step to seeing.Stopping the world is not a cryptic metaphor that
really doesn't mean anything. And its scope and importance as one of
the main propositions of my knowledge should not be misjudged.
I am teaching you how to stop the world. Nothing will
work, however, if you are very stubborn. Be less stubborn, and you
will probably stop the world with any of the techniques
I teach you. Everything I will tell you to do is a technique for
stopping the world.
The sorcerer's description of the world is perceivable. But our
insistence on holding on to our standard version of reality renders
us almost deaf and blind to it. I'm going to give you what I call
"techniques for stopping the world."
When you begin this teaching, there is another reality, that is to
say, there is a sorcery description of the world, which you do not
know. As a sorcerer and a teacher, I am teaching you that
description. What I am doing with you consists, therefore, in setting
up that unknown reality by unfolding its description, adding
increasingly more complex parts as you go along.
In order to arrive at seeing one first has to stop
the world. Stopping the world is indeed an
appropriate rendition of certain states of awareness in which the
reality of everyday life is altered because the flow of
interpretation, which ordinarily runs uninterruptedly, has been
stopped by a set of circumstances alien to that flow. In this case
the set of circumstances alien to our normal flow of interpretations
is the sorcery description of the world. The precondition for
stopping the world is that one has to be convinced; in
other words, one has to learn the new description in a total sense,
for the purpose of pitting it against the old one, and in that way
break the dogmatic certainty, which we all share, that the validity
of our perceptions, or our reality of the world, is not to be
questioned.
After stopping the world the next step is
seeing. By that I mean what could be categorized as
responding to the perceptual solicitations of a world outside the
description we have learned to call reality.
All these steps can only be understood in terms of the description to
which they belong; a description that I'm endeavoring to give you.
Let, then, this teaching be the source of entrance into that
description.

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Foreword

In his first book, The Teachings of Don Juan,
published by the University of California Press, we are told: In 1960, as an
anthropology student at the University
of California, Los Angeles, Carlos Castaneda began collecting
information on the medicinal plants used by the Indians of the
southwest. Subsequently he met, and became the apprentice of, don
Juan, a Yaqui Indian.
From 1968 thru 1999, the following ten books were
published. They recount his apprenticeship under don Juan and
therewith provide us entrance to the knowledge don Juan passed on to
him--knowledge of an ancient system for becoming a "man of
knowledge."

1968--The Teachings of don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge1971--A
Separate Reality: Further Conversations with don Juan1972--Journey
to Ixtlan: The Lessons of don Juan.
1974--Tales Of Power1977--The
Second Ring of Power1981--The Eagle's Gift1984--The Fire From
Within1987--The Power of Silence: Further lessons of don Juan
1993--The Art of Dreaming1999--The Active Side of Infinity.

This book is a compilation of most of the ideas, procedures, methods,
systems, processes, concepts, and principles of the
teachings of don Juan presented by Carlos Castaneda .
I have, where necessary, changed the original text in order for the
teaching to be directed as though from don Juan to any new student.
That being said, however, there are a number of places where the
teaching is directed as though you have been a participant in
something with don Juan; or are acting or thinking in a particular
way. Presenting it that way, seemed to me, the easiest way to leave
parts of the teaching intact . And on the point of my presenting
everything as though from don Juan: a number of places, perhaps as
much as 10% of the total, were actually Castaneda's insights,
explanations, or additions to the teaching. Lastly, in at least two
places, the teaching actually came from other of don Juan's
associates.

In "The Fire From Within": chapter 3, paragraph 48, Carlos Castaneda
tells us that don Juan said that "the old seers...actually
saw the indescribable force which is the source of all
sentient beings. They called it the Eagle..." I refer to this passage
in order to justify my usage, in this book, of the term, "the
Indescribable Force," instead of the term don Juan
used, "the Eagle." If you miss
the use of the term "the Eagle," I apologize.
The chapter titles of this book and the material in those chapters,
correspond to the above nine books. Within these chapters are two
types of line breaks. The asterisked line breaks set apart points
which, because of removed context, now appear as disjointed
passages. The plain line breaks correspond to Carlos Castaneda's books' chapter
breaks.